For my Writer's Craft final summative this year, we made a chapbook consisting of several pieces we created in and out of class. A chapbook is a self-published (in my case it involved printing everything two on one page landscape format then gluing together the pages :/) collection of writing and short stories that share a common thread and go along some kind of progression. I thought I'd post mine up because, hey, why not?
Mine was called What Goes Unnoticed. I've posted the critical introduction and just the first couple of pieces because otherwise it gets kind of long. I'll post more up if people respond favourably, or if anyone expresses interest in something in the table of contents.
Introduction
Writing is the subtlest form of expression. We human beings do not learn words by ourselves. We learn through society: as children, we are taught, yet long into our lives we continue to learn our languages, with all its nuances. As such, the disparity between what we read on a page and what we understand in our minds is what gives writing its depth and subtlety. When reading, we create a voice for the text we are reading, we, the readers, imbue characteristics onto that voice. It is our choice to understand a work as irony, an ode, or a lament. It is up to us to judge the reliability of the narrator. The black and white image outlined by the text is filled with colour by the imagination of the reader. But what if something is hiding? Often, when we say or write something, we mean something else. We create subtext, and overtones, and imply matters into our works. Writing allows for this “between the lines” manner in a way that no other medium does. There is a conscious and subconscious choice on the part of the writer as to how expressive his or her work is to be, how much he or she wishes to show. Also, as obvious as the author tries to make his or her references, there is always something that goes unnoticed.
This brings me to the thread of my collection: the magic that goes unnoticed. In each of my works, lies someone, or many people, who miss something, who see something but do not understand. By the end of the piece they may have realized what it was, but it always begins, and sometimes ends, with the unnoticed magic. The unaware individuals could include anyone: the main character, other characters, the world as a whole, even the reader! In the case of the reader, there is something about the main character or the piece that does not come through explicitly, a kind of hidden wonder, which must be discerned. The two key words needed to read this series of works are awareness and understanding. What are the characters, the reader, the world, aware of? What do or do they not understand?
The pieces are sorted in a kind of chronological order. Not the order in which I wrote them, but rather in terms of the maturity of the perspective. It begins with the birth of an idea, and is followed with the explorations of a newborn plant. Then it travels onward to that of a child, and young hearts yearning for new experiences. Eventually, later on, the characters are more set in their ways. They have more preconceived notions and reflect more on what is rather than what can be.
Of course, there are several difficulties associated with this sort of writing. Often, when writing, there is this pervading feeling where I just want to shout it out, and spell out exactly what I want to show. There is a fine line to walk, where I want the reader to understand by the end, but I do not want to make it too easy, or else the sense of wonderment is lost. Finally, I also have the characters to take into consideration. They do not know what, I, the author, know, especially that their lives are being intensely scrutinized by a curious individual: the reader. As such, I had to try to avoid pandering to the reader, explaining things that the character would take for granted. My success in dealing with these issues varies from piece to piece, but still they are important to identify.
The two challenges I presented myself with are in the works “What the Beggar Sings About” and “Goodbye.” In “What the Beggar Sings About,” the colour of sound takes a deep representative role. The challenge was with portraying this in a resonant way that the reader could visualize, considering that it is difficult to link colour and sound due to their sensual disparity. “Goodbye” is written in second person singular perspective. This is a voice I have toyed with before, though with little success. I enjoy this voice because it forces the reader to imagine themselves as the main character, and it involves the characters of the story in a discussion with the reader. However, it must be written in such a way that the reader understands what he or she is supposed to say, and there is a relative rarity of this voice outside of “Choose Your Own Adventure” books, leaving me with little example material from which to draw upon.
Despite all of these challenges, I believe the thread linking the pieces is clear enough, and I hope that you, my reader, will enjoy searching for all the wonders placed either hidden or in plain sight throughout my work.
Table of Contents
I. Introduction
II. Just a thought
III. Worthless
IV. The Games We Played
V. Unsatisfied
VI. Dear Stranger
VII. Excerpt from Whispers of the City
VIII. Vagabond
IX. Madman’s Ravings
X. What the Beggar Sings About
XI. An Extraordinary Phenomenon
XII. Goodbye
XIII. The Angel’s Crown
I. Just a thought
Use this cliche anywhere in your writing prompt: "growing like a weed."
An idea, planted in your mind, surreptitiously takes root. Down, in your subconscious, it grapples with your paradigms, wrestling with them until they have been choked like too many delicate peonies. Soon enough, it is growing like a weed, drawing resources from you at a voracious rate, cancerous. The foliage begins to show, your words, expressions and actions announcing to the world what has become of your free will. Soon enough, it reaches for the sun, growing to extremism. Nothing is high enough, far enough, wide enough. As the leaves begin to wither you begin to worry. The idea has grown to define you, you have become the idea, will it wither away along with your body and soul? As leaf turns to leaf, and seed turns to seed, your ideas of propagation condense into a single small sphere, rife with potency. You let it loose on the wind, and one day, it will plant itself into the unsuspecting conscious of another, where the cycle will begin anew.
II. Worthless
It peeks upward out of its hard casing, looking warily at the crack of light hanging overhead like a sign from heaven. With great effort, it applies enough pressure to break the shell. The peeping rays gradually wash over it, imbuing energy and life. Thirstily, it drinks up the light, breathing deeply and feeling the energy spread throughout its being. Invigorated, it tentatively sticks out a single hair-thin tendril and pushes it into the ground, but it is too weak, and its dent resembles the footprint of an ant. All it can do is look up, towards the cracked ceiling, and wait.
Gradually, the sunlight’s hue shifts. It is overtaken by blue, which turns to violet, and finally the light fades away. Shivering in the dark, it longs for the sun to come back, so it can try again and again, to force its roots downwards, to force itself upwards, towards more light. In what seems like forever, the light returns, but it is different now. The warm yellow light has become cold, and white, and gray. It is sad, without the wonderful energy filling it, the darkness may as well have stayed. As if to reflect its sadness, a single drop falls through the crack, wetting a spot nearby before quickly being soaked into the ground. Soon enough, a torrent floods through. A drop falls onto it, and then another and each of them whisk away a precious amount of heat and energy. Panicked, it tries to sway away from the deluge threatening to drain it entirely, but it is engulfed. The water shifts around, carrying ground around and it begins to sink, sink deeper into the ground where it had been poking just a moment ago. Its roots covered in moisture, steadily, against its better judgment, it begins to drink. Heavy and waterlogged, it stretches to relieve itself, and finds that this feels good. It continues to stretch itself for a long time, until it finally cannot hold the tension anymore, and when it relaxes, it finds it cannot come down. Stuck in the stretched position, and now firmly rooted to the ground, a sudden weariness overcomes it and it rests.
Later, the sun rises once again and yellow light streams through the crack, which is somehow closer now. Eager for more light, for more energy, it pushes on the walls around it, and to its surprise, loosened by the rain, it gives way. With all its might, it continues to push, and push, and push, until the crack opens enough to wash its entirety with light. It basks, and suddenly realizes that there are parts of its body it never knew it had before. Two small, flat leaves have sprouted from its side, and are busy drinking up the sunshine. It shivers with pleasure.
Days pass, and it now stands tall and strong, its leaves and roots have multiplied, and the day before it finally had peaked out of the hole in which it lived. Today, it finds itself being inspected by a long green insect that once upon a time would have been much larger than it, but was now a few times smaller. They size each other up, and stand silently by each other, feeling a sort of kinship in each other’s life. However, the caterpillar opens its mouth and bites down on a leaf. The plant winces in anticipation, expecting pain, but is surprised when it is not hurt at all. Happily, the caterpillar continues its snack, and leaves after it has fully fed. The plant, unable to mourn the loss of its leaf, resigns itself to contemplation.
Nourishment. That is what it had become. Somehow, it had become the sun and the rain and the air for this little caterpillar, and the caterpillar would feed and grow. The plant smiled inwardly, it did not mind being the rain and the sun, it loved them so much. With a happy sigh, it let itself relax.
Suddenly, it finds itself held in a vice-like grip. The grip tightens and begins to pull it upwards. It feels a stretch, and initially welcomes the growing phase, but then realizes that it is not lengthening, and that somehow this was different from the growing stretch. It holds itself steady against the tug, digging its roots in deeper, defending itself, when suddenly the soil around it breaks and it is pulled into the air. It sails over the shoulder of the powerful being and lands on the pavement. All around is solid black asphalt, unable to hold any moisture or nutrients. It hangs limply, unable to force a tendril into the hard baked ground. Under the noonday heat it begins to wither away. Sandwiched between the hot sunshine and steaming pavement, it gasps for water, praying for rain. It had not known the sun could be so cruel! As its life dies away, it recalls the one word the being had uttered while it had sailed in the air:
Weed.
III. The Games We Played
Galaxy. Gaaaahhh-lehhhhckseeeeeee-ee-ee-ee-ee. We were getting dizzier and dizzier and dizzier but we didn’t stop. Then we fell because we were so dizzy. The world was spinning and spinning even though we stopped and the clouds were spinning and spinning and it was like the Milky Way. That’s the cloudy stuff we see at nights when the moon is hiding and the Big Dipper is dipping for its milk like it wants to make a big cup of hot chocolate to drink. Taylor says that the moon is hiding because it already drank the chocolate milk and now has a big milk mustache and is too shy to show it. It’s a secret so don’t tell anybody, but you can see the Milky Way even when the sun is smiling. It’s easy! All you have to do is spin and spin until you’re really dizzy and the clouds spin too.
The snow was melting under us and the water was getting in, so we tucked in our arms and rolled because we didn’t want to get sick. We made really super sure that our arms and legs were straight this time but we still couldn’t roll in a straight line so we ended up falling down the hill and crashed into the fence. It was okay though, we were bundled up like my brother is when he wakes up in the morning, rolled up in his blanket. Daddy says that when he was as little as I am he used to call it his “blantet”, which is kind of funny since he doesn’t say that anymore.
We got up and ran up the hill and there were lots of kids on the other side coming up and sliding down and coming up and sliding down on the ice, over and over and over again. Taylor wanted to join them but I didn’t want to because it makes your bum cold and I don’t like doing things again and again so we ran to the baseball diamond and I saw an eagle so I did my very best eagle cry which I am very proud of because my other friend Pavel always tries it but his sounds like a goose honking. It cried back and I thought that maybe it thought that I was its baby so I stopped making my cries because its babies were probably hungry and the mommy needed to get back to them as soon as possible with worms to eat.
We started to roll snowballs. If you roll and roll and roll the snowballs can get really, really big and when you have lots of them then you can make a fort made of huge snowballs and fill up the gaps with smaller ones. Everyone likes to do this because we shouldn’t throw snowballs because they can hurt if there is ice or rocks inside them, so even if we make the fort I guess it doesn’t really protect us from anything but its fun to make them anyway. Before we were done even the first snowball the bell rang and it was time to get back inside. Even though we didn’t want to go back inside we could get in trouble if we didn’t. So we started walking back and laughed and talked about how much fun this recess was.
IV. Unsatisfied
He stepped out onto the water, tiny ripples emanating from wherever he placed his feet. Step step, step step. Initially he amused himself by distorting the images that came through the crystal clear water below, but soon enough he was once again bored. He ran over to the center of the lake and sat down, feeling the cool sensation of the water creep up his back as he lay himself down on top. Placing his hands behind his head, he looked at the clouds enviously. If only he could fly! He imagined what he would do, jumping from fluffy cloud to fluffy cloud, the wild wind sweeping around him upwards and downwards and diagonally, sending him careening into harmless somersaults and cartwheels. Where he was the flat plane of the water offered but planar winds, how boring. Even the strongest of gusts around here were mere zephyrs in comparison to what he imagined up there. Everything around here was so flat. He could move forwards, and backwards, and side to side, but that wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted to go upwards and downwards! Hovering in mid-air, he would stretch his arms and legs to their heart’s content, without the feeling of weight that came with being chained to the ground by that fiend of fiends, gravity. He stood up and stretched, raising his hands to the sky as if to touch it. Up! Up! Please! Alas, it was not to be. Discouraged, he trudged back to land, shoulders hunched. On the water, his reflection swayed and warped with the ripples from his steps.
V. Dear Stranger
To whom it may concern,
I’ve always had a difficult time, trying to farm up here. For one, it doesn’t rain. I mean, there’s water all around, so there’s plenty of water for irrigation, but the distinct lack of precipitation makes life a little difficult. It’s also generally cold, which means no bananas, citrus, or most of any fruit, really. I’ve been able to grow some tomatoes, asparagus, wintermelon, things like that. I have to breathe on them daily to warm them up and provide carbon dioxide, something else that’s also lacking around here, since the air is extremely thin.
It’s not all bad though. The sun shines incessantly throughout the day, so my vegetables are all extremely sweet. My tomatoes especially are divine, and I’d continue farming here if only for those. The air, though thin, is pure, so each deep breath is refreshing and invigorating. As I said, there’s water all around, so though I have to work to irrigate all my crops, I never have to suffer droughts. Beyond the difficulty of trying to raise crops, there’s also some personal health risks associated with being here. The sun’s radiation is especially strong here, all through the year. I have to worry about sunburn so I wear sunscreen of SPF 150 all the time. I also have to worry about random lightning bolts, which pop up once in a while. Luckily, the soil I use is a good grounding agent, so I’m safe as long as I don’t stray too close to the edge.
It’s a shame though, since my favourite part, beyond the delicious food and the fresh air, and the constant sunshine, is looking out over the edge, especially when I’m passing over a landmass. I love seeing the patchwork of fields and woods and mountains pass by, or to follow winding rivers with my eyes until they snake off into the distance. Even when the ground isn’t visible, that just means that as far as the eye there are fluffy peaks and valleys, and then I don’t even need to be near the edge. Sometimes it gets lonely way up here, I hardly get any visitors. Occasionally a plane passes by, but they go so fast they disturb the air and send me careening away before I get a chance to say hello.
That’s why I’m writing this letter. I got an idea from one of the stories I read when I was a child: it was about a man who was stuck on a desert island, and who stuffed a letter into a bottle, sealed it with a cork, and let it float, hoping that someone would find the bottle, read it, and come and rescue him. Though I am not in much need of rescuing, I’m still on something of a remote island, so I decided I’d try it. So, if by any chance someone, anyone, reads this, pass by sometime and give me a visit! I’m just twenty kilometres south from Mt. Everest. You can’t miss it, it’s huge! To my future friend, I bid you farewell, come and visit me!
PS. If at all possible, could you bring me an orange? I would love to try one. Refrigeration shouldn’t be a problem around here.
VI. Excerpt from Whispers of the City
“Now’d be a good time t’ go.”
They left the apartment, and went down the stairs. When they had reached the road, Elmond asked, “Dan, d’ye think ye could spend this moment t’ teach us runnin’?”
“I can’t explain everythin’ without showing ye an’ havin’ ye practice it o’er and o’er, but I can tell ye a bit until we be at the Westo’er’s Manse. ‘Tisn’t far though, so I can’t tell ye very much.”
And so they stuck to the path, Dan explaining the key points of his method of movement.
“I sees where I need t’ go an’ find the quickest path. An’ the quickest path has a habit o’ bein’ the straightest ‘un also. The trick is t’ make the difficult bits, like height an’ traffic, not matter. The better ye get, the straighter a path will open t’ ye.”
It wasn’t long before the Westo’er’s manse was in sight, obstructed by several houses, trees, and a large chapel, but slightly visible with a discerning eye through a sliver that somehow managed to evade all of these. Dan decided to test them to see if they had a firm grasp on all he had said so far.
“Right then,” he said, stopping suddenly, “I want ye both t’ tell me, what’s the fastest way from here exactly t’ the Westo’er’s Manse?”
“Well,” said Elmond, “first ye’d ‘ave to climb that tree, then get on t’ that roof there,”
“Then ye’d hop o’er and balance along that wall, then run ‘round o’er there so ye don’t get slowed down by those there trees,” added Gant, craning his neck so as to see better.
“An’ past there ye can’t even see... but I guess there’d be a road-”
Dan cut them both off there with a gesture.
“Yer wrong. ‘Twas a trick question,” he shook his head, then smiled at them freely.
“The fastest way is there.”
He pointed at the sliver of sight that showed the way to the manse, straight and true.
“That’s the true meanin’ of runnin’. Ye gots t’ fly.”
VII. Vagabond
As soon as I told people that I lived in a hotel, they’d give me a baffled stare, and began to think of me as an eccentric and unreliable individual, a vagabond of some sort, a rootless person. I mean, it’s one thing to live in a hotel, but being born in one really starts to sound shady.
As much as I understood where they came from, I hated to be around people for just this reason. Always with the questions, always with their whole mind mapped out on their face as soon as something unusual was presented to them and themselves. Each day I would walk briskly past all of the populous streets and take refuge walking in the shady alleys. That way I didn’t have to deal with anyone with the gift of recognition.
Eventually, with all my habits of avoidance and my generally non-luxurious lifestyle, I began to think and feel like the very vagabond they thought of me. Not that I had stopped taking care of myself, or that I was destitute, but what people thought had an effect on my opinion, regardless of whether I shared it or not. I had ceased to look into the hotel mirror, somehow afraid of what I might find. As my avoidance became such a large part of my life, it grew to define me. What little friends and family I had left from the explosion began to dwindle, and it left me more isolated than ever.
Ten years I spent like this. No, in fact it got worse. I began to telecommute rather than to go to work, so I wouldn’t have to face my boss. My constant avoidance of sunlit exposure left me sick and starved of broad daylight, and eventually, when I dared to ventured out, the sun seared my flesh as if I were somehow allergic.
I took out my cellphone and looked at the numbers that were present, vestiges of some past life. Something flashed across the phone, something frightening. It disappeared as the backlight of the phone lit up the screen, and I took it for something I imagined. Scrolling down the numbers, I happened upon my childhood sweetheart, now married, with three kids. The one friend I had that I had not had contact since all of this. I called her up and we agreed to meet, at that restaurant-café where we used to hang out and eat ice cream sundaes. For once, maybe I could feel like a normal person with a total stranger, or at least that’s what she had become since it had been so long.
When I reached the café, the waiter, grimacing, came to help me and I found out that she was already there. I found her table and sat down, and to my horror, terror began to fill her face. I asked her what was wrong, but she was lost for words. Out of some form of twisted pity or out of the sheer memory of who I once was, she endured me for one minute more, pulled out a mirror, and I saw my reflection.
VIII. Madman's Ravings
The Paris slums are a gathering place for eccentric people—people who have fallen into solitary, half-mad grooves of life and given up trying to be normal or decent. Poverty frees them from ordinary standards of behaviour, just as money frees people from work.
It is wonderful being half-mad. How excellent it is, to be able to sing one’s heart out, not caring about any odd glances. Streets are made to be danced upon, most especially on the sunny days with blue skies, and when they are made of cobblestone so old that moss grows between them. One realizes that true madness is walking quickly, hunched, with the eyes draw towards the ground, on a day like this. Make like a tourist: the thirty-three centime Eiffel tower key chains are treasures for their beautiful golden colour, never mind that they have been deemed worthless by sane folk. Hunger makes all food delicious; a gourmet delicacy is to be found in every morsel of bread on the street, the sweet nectar of life, in every raindrop that pours from an angry sky. Odd change is less odd when it represents approximately infinity times what is stored in the bank, and even the dullest copper piece retains all of its splendour when found, nestled snugly in a drain. Each breath drawn by the lungs is drawn ever deeper, seems ever fresher, and maybe, just maybe, you can even catch a whiff of elegant cigarette smoke in the air, drifting along as if waiting for some bystander to snatch it up, nose pointed towards the skies.
IX. What the Beggar Sings About
Write about a beggar who loves to hear herself sing.
She sat on the vent, her colourful if not quite clean clothes a stark contrast to the grey all around her. The flow of people around her rose and ebbed, some giving her furtive glances while others plodded on, looking at the ground in front of them. Her eyes were the only ones that were pointed elsewhere. She looked at the sky and sang about azures and birds and clouds. She looked at the glass buildings all around and her voice soared with a tune as crystalline as the window panes that rose high around her. All around her, she turned the gray to blue, lacing each note with a different shade, so that if one paid attention they could see tiny differences in the world around them. But no one paid attention. Sometimes, as if it were something she indulged herself in only in celebration or on occasion, she closed her eyes and sang about herself. As her voice rang a distant tremolo, she recounted who she was, where she was, her past, her present, and her future. There was no sadness in her voice, no self-pity, just utter bliss. Tones dripped with honey whenever she mentioned music, and she would linger and hesitate after saying the word, as if there was nothing afterwards. But still, the passerby plodded along, looking at the ground in front of them. The occasional cursory glance looked for a cup, a guitar case, but none were to be found. As blue rose and fell around them, they stared at gray as if entranced: gray was their life, blue was hers.
A gentleman stepped out into the square, and my heart beat fast as I observed, this lady whose aria went ashamedly ignored, and this man who somehow, had noticed. As he moved closer his coat-tails swayed around him, and he began to sway as well. I watched as he screwed up his eyes and welled up all the courage he possessed in his worldly body. In a sudden relaxation, in a rush of relief and release, he added a note of pure green to the mix. He sang about the grass and the trees and the distant sea. It was a tint for the hue in the air, a pigmentation that added so much depth to the song. And the crystal blue air thickened and swirled with new light. Water. The lady and the gentleman looked at each other in the eyes, unbreaking in gaze as in tune. I stole a look at the passerby, and sure enough, as quickly as they tried to hurry as they had in the clear blue air, they walked as though in slow motion through this sea of aquamarine. But still, they took no notice of the duet.
I knew then what I had to do. I stepped out determinedly into the square, confident of my purpose and fighting the wave of self-consciousness that washed over me like the waves of the song around me. I summoned my own ideas, about fidelity, and nobility, and everything that was whole and good, then I added purple. I was careful at first, adding highlights and lowlights, but afraid to add my whole melody, as if I would be rejected. Then, I locked eyes with the lady, and fear left me. For a glorious afternoon we sang together, and my world came crashing down. Work, money, business, all of this seemed unnecessary when confronted with our three part harmony. Did I have a family? Did I have friends? Did I have a job? A home? Who was I? What did I do? What was my name?
When we finished, the answers left me, and soon after, my questions did too. Then there were three of us, living on nothing, the occasional alms gratefully accepted but never requested, entirely sustained on the colours we ourselves suffused into the air, and waiting for the whole world to notice.
